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An anonymous reader writes "Apple is now removing many risque applications from its App Store so as not to 'scare off potential customers.' The removed applications, including SlideHer and Dirty Fingers, allowed people to see scantily clad women. Although they were once approved by Apple, even reaching the 'most downloaded' lists, Apple removed them after getting complaints that they were degrading to women. That said, the Sports Illustrated application is still available for those who want scantily clad women on their iPhone, and developers are up in arms over the perceived inconsistency. It's sure a good thing for those worried parents that they don't have any kind of web browser on there. On the internet, you're never more than one click away from something horrible."
Some are speculating that this is a ploy from Apple to drum up interest in the iPad from educators.

I cannot for a minute believe that the 'histrionic control freaks' at Apple can not come up with separate Adult and Education sections (Dumb and Dumber?) for the iPad. Or even an iPad only part of the store.

Just because someone doesn't follow your logic doesn't make them dumb. There could be a variety of reasons, a few being, A.) adult content isn't worth that much when opportunity cost is taken in to consideration. What's the point in pleasing a few depraved nerds when you can indoctrinate an entire generation from grade school. B.) This could be from a lobbyist stand point. Apple lobbies some senator for support with the educational system and there stipulation is get rid of the porn. At this point in coo

Well, its not like you can't put pr0n on your iPod touch, iPhone or even the iPad when you get it!!

Just put your still photos on the phone via iTunes....or rip your pr0n dvd's with Handbrake..and put them on the device via iTunes. YOu don't have to use the app store for ALL your content.

Hell, I've never actually bought anything off iTunes...I have my own audio and video content. I've only used the store for free podcasts...and the free apps for the iPhone. Other than that..who needs the store?

I actually am confused about this, when they added parental controls they should had been able to just flag these as "not opt for minors" and prevent them from downloading on iPhones with parental controls enabled...

Apple isn't known for letting the market decide. They are control freaks. Their behavior in regard to the App Store is totally unreasonable, and it is going to kill the App Store. They need to learn to "Think Different". Assholes.

You know, people keep saying that, and yet, they hit 1 billion+ downloads so far in nine months (if their numbers are to be trusted). So, in a way, I'm finding it harder and harder to agree that their formula isn't viable. It seems to be doing fine. Is that because ($JOE_END_USER.cares() == false)? Yeah probably. But I'm not worried for their success. It seems unavoidable.

It was always about selling iPhones and iPod Touches (and soon iPads).

The 30% that Apple gets really is meant to cover costs. When the App Store launched, a number of real developers (ie people with retail software behind them, not just/. posters) mentioned that they spent anywhere between 20 to 40% on those costs, so were generally happy with Apple taking 30% to handle them.

And it's been restored since they became a much more open platform, which happened when, exactly?

Apple was almost destroyed by bad management that stopped developing new products worth buying, created confusing groups of model lineups and kept absurdly high pricing for machines with last year's performance.

The first thing Jobs did on their current road to success was kill the clones, rather the opposite of opening up the platform, no?

As an Apple app store consumer I will say that these boobie apps (along with all the "points" apps for all the mafia wars clones) are basically unwanted spam to me. They make the app store less appealing to use since they clutter the place up.

Perhaps if the "devs" were less spammy about their 99c collections of images Apple wouldn't have brought the hammer down.

As an Apple app store consumer I will say that these business and productivity apps are basically unwanted spam to me. They make the app store less appealing to use since they clutter the place up. They make it really hard for me to find my boobie apps.

Apple makes some of the dumbest moves in regards to the lifeline of their app store - the developers! Boy are they good at pissing people off! I'm a very happy shareholder (picked it up at 27 back when...!) but every day there's some new twist that they've pulled and alienated this group or that. I think parental controls and allowing any app that doesn't do harm to the phone itself would be their best stance - how many sales are they missing because of these China-like rules?

Agreed. Sony learned from their VHS vs. Betamax lessons and proved it with the success of Bluray. What was the lesson? Betamax discouraged porn on their format. The result was that VHS won because it didn't and while no one wants to be found guilty of favoring VHS for porn, that was a significant factor in buyers' purchasing decisions.

Sony almost took the same route with Bluray and realized their mistake was being repeated early on and allowed porn.

Apple? If you don't allow adult content for adults to use while your competitors do? Watch out.

Apple? If you don't allow adult content for adults to use while your competitors do? Watch out.

Because Apple has become about being in a certain mindset. They not only promote it, lately they're doing their best to ENFORCE it. If you use Apple, you're a young, cool, hip, media loving yuppy. Even if you're 50 years old you must still believe in this image to fit with Apple. You sit in coffee shops for hours with your Apple devices wearing black turtlenecks and sipping over-priced latte's. Porn (along with other things that Apple declares so) doesn't fit within this envelope; it's just too "uncool"

Oddly, porn is illegal in some jurisdictions. Were I giving an i-something to a 14 year old boy, I think I'd like to have a bit of control over what that boy's watching if he's my child, and my responsibility. Eventually, he might break out of whatever limits are imposed, but that's his initiative, and mine as a parent.

Once he's matured, I'd say he has the right to do what he wants. Most men consumer porn. Most boys should not.

That Apple is having a hard time with dividing who and what's acceptable is the t

I disagree, porn is for boys, not men. No man would escape into fantasy land to gain sexual satisfaction, because that is a boyish thing to do. Of course, not all boys are under 18. Is seems there are very few real men in the world.

Also, it's nice to say that boys should not consume porn, but everyone knows that all boys have access to it. That's why I have such a huge problem with this kind of censorship. It does nothing to solve the real problem. It just gives parents an excuse to believe there may not be a problem, when there clearly is one.

That is utter bullshit, I can only assume that your wife reads what you post here. Good luck with that.

All men masturbate. Some just lie about it. But playing the moral superiority, 'real men don't fantasize' card is such nineteenth century, Victorian ere crap. All the studies I've read show fantasy and masturbation as normal, healthy aspects of human sexuality.

Hey, if I had mod points I'd mod this flamebait, and I'm taking it. I'm a woman and I DON'T THINK masturbation is unhealthy. Watch what you say.

There's one point I concur with the controversial post here. I have the feeling that youngsters actually search for porn more actively than adults, since adults have access to it easily (I'm not going to say 'boys' cause girls do it too [you don't believe me?]). Now, I'm not a parent, but I'm kind of sure I wouldn't freak out if my teenager watched porn. As long a

And what part of my disagreement to that declaration didn't you understand?

Apple made a choice. They're the ones responsible for their image and marketing. They're the ones that drew a line-- and we can agree that they should have done this earlier. Their market share is huge, and they're the pioneers in app delivery to smartphones. Did they screw up? Yup. Should they have made these decisions long ago? Yes. Their app store is a work in progress. NO ONE has their success here. They had to bite a bullet and

Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.

I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.

Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer.. In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.

As I walk among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.

Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.

>>>Agreed. Sony learned from their VHS vs. Betamax lessons and proved it with the success of Bluray. What was the lesson? Betamax discouraged porn on their format.>>>

I wish people would stop posting false stories. Sony allowed Betamax to carry porn, and have (or rather had) a whole library to prove it. Playboy, swimsuits, unmentionable stuff - it was all available on Betamax. You are quoting a false urban legend. In reality the reason Betamax failed is because it only supported 1 hour per tape (in 1975) and people felt 1 hour was not long enough to record an evening football game, or primetime programming, or afternoon soaps.

So instead they chose VHS which supported 4 hours (in 1976). While Sony later increased the max record time to 3 hours in 1980, the damage had already been done, and VHS had already gained dominance.

As for quality between VHS and Betamax, that is yet another urban legend. Just as Sony tried to dupe people into believing the PS2 had Toy Story-level graphics, so too did they try the same with Betamax, but in reality, there's no statistical difference:- Both are 3 megahertz video bandwidth (250 lines analog horizontal resolution)- Both have 0.6 megahertz chroma bandwidth- Both have AM-quality sound recording... and later Hi-Fi recording

but you're wrong. when vhs and beta came out, beta supported 250 lines of resolution vs vhs' 240, and the heavy luma/chroma 'bleed' in vhs made the picture look noticeably worse. eventually vhs upped to 250 lines of resolution, and incidently beta actually downgraded to 240 lines of resolution in order to fit 2 hours onto a tape. however, the misconception about betamax picture quality is often attributed to people who've seen superbeta tapes, which weren't introduced until 1985 when the format war was already over. however, at 290 lines of resolution these tapes were/are significantly clearer than vhs. as for porn, yes there was beta porn, but it came much later than vhs porn and was significantly harder to come by, and this was because sony initially tried to block it from the platform completely. so while the common stories told about the format war aren't fully accurate, calling them 'false urban legends' is well, a false internet legend.

"how many sales are they missing because of these China-like rules?"Probably none at all. Or not enough that it matters.

China like rules? Please if you don't like it don't buy an iPhone. Apple is just using it's freedom of choice. It is their store and they can choose to carry what they want.Every time I see a story like this about how upset people are I just have to giggle. The developers will stay with the iPhone as long as they are making money. People will buy the iPhone as long as they can get the ap

For Apple to have "China like rules" they would be throwing people in jail for writing the apps for android that they don't like. Right now they are no different that a tee shirt shop that doesn't want to carry tee shirts pro KKK shirts.

I don't have a problem with saying you do not like this policy.You have every right to not like this policy but.It isn't a violation of your rights.It isn't censorship.It isn't immoral.And don't buy an iPhone then complain about how your rights are being violated.Those are all just silly.

Censorship is when the government controls what you can and can not publish.

Is a book publisher choosing to not publish a book because it is bad censorship?Not at all.That is a choice the company makes. Drop using things li

99% of the "developers" making these bikini girl apps are actually chinese or indian app sweatshops churning out sub-standard crap on a quantity over quality basis. I feel sorry for the other 1% but I think this is Apple doing a preemptive strike against these crApp Factories ahead of the iPad launch.

>>>A merchant app that sold bikinis was dropped too, for showing girls in bikinis.

fap fap fap

Teacher: "What's that noise?"Students: (silent)Teacher: "So like I was saying, during the antitrust legislation, President..."

fap fap fap

Teacher: "Okay knock it off!"Guy-in-back: "Oh sorry. I was just using my iPhone."

THIS is why Apple banned the ap. Hmmm... looking at this site, I'm wondering why it's possible to order the bottom of the bikini w/o the top? What good's a swimsuit with no top? LINK http [simplybeach.com]

I am an American Patriot. I am a conservative. I am a liberal. These are not contradictions. I love America, our constitution and the values on which this nation was founded. "OMG! Boobies are the devil! Think of the children!" was not one of those values.

Those are not American Conservatives.They may be: Regressives. Destroyers of the constitution. Fascists. Theocrats. Enemies of the people.

First, beaches aren't only on oceans. In that part of the US, there's a lot of lakes of various sizes scooped out by glaciers in the last Ice Age. Many of them have beaches.

Second, it can get unpleasantly warm in the summer, because there is no ocean nearby to moderate temperatures. There are a few months of the year when you'd enjoy sitting outside in skimpy clothes (I don't think you want to see me in a bikini, frankly).

I think that there was some whining about how The Children could still see the names and screenshots of the corrupting smut that threatens their young souls, even if their devices are set up to forbid them from buying and installing said smut.

Of course, that would seem to suggest that they should just make a little change to how the app store works(i.e. don't display anything you don't have permission to install) instead of playing Taliban morality police with the developers they don't think are big enough to matter(while overlooking playboy and sports illustrated)...

I question the sanity of anybody who downloads single-purpose porn programs on a device that comes preloaded with a general purpose porn program(these are known in polite company, of course, as "web browsers"); but that doesn't make mass-banning without warning, after months of toleration, and with the exception of big publishers, any less of a dick move.

Worse, in a way, is that it isn't a terribly "apple-like" dick move, in the classic sense of what makes Apple interesting. Apple, under Jobs, has always been willing to throw technologies (and indirectly products and companies) under the bus if they think that it will allow them to do something cooler and better and shinier in the future. Dropping 64-bit Carbon, for instance, was classic Jobs. Who cares if Adobe and the MS MacBU will be very sad pandas, Steve has decided that carbon is old and busted and cocoa is the new hotness, everybody will just have to live with it. This, on the other hand, has 100% of the dickishness; but, by making exceptions for major publishers, is far more craven; and, since it is basically being done instead of improving the existing app ratings system, has none of the "in service of greater technical goodness" factor.

It's just dickish and lazy. Apple is supposed to be dickish and driven.

I'm pretty sure Apple could drum up an altruistic-sounding or business-smart reason to ban just about any app from their store.

-No competing browsers? They duplicate existing functionality. Certainly wouldn't want that.
-No scantily clad women? They objectify women. But pay no heed to the Sports Illustrated app or the entirety of the internet at your very literal fingertips.
-No Google voice? Also duplicates existing functionality. But be sure to ignore the allowance of Skype.

Typical feminist hypocrisy on **anything** that might appeal to heterosexual male sexuality, but that doesn't involve a "by your leave, your majesty" from a woman! It's ok for a woman to masturbate, use toys and sleep around. That's "empowering." A man does anything like that and he's "degrading women."

All that most people know about feminism comes from corporate press statements and talk radio.

Feminism would do well to distance itself from the name.

I find it odd that people would think this degrading to women. The very nature of the app is to exploit male sexuality for profit. They're the ones paying for it. The women are being paid and making their decisions freely. Autonomy applies too to men though and I feel that men should be able to make the decision themselves about whether or not they wan

You are in a very small minority, and most women who label themselves as feminist would disagree with you. It doesn't matter that you are right and they are wrong. They have co-opted your label, and have twisted it to mean something very different than what you want it to mean. Much like a strange group of meat eaters have co-opted the term vegetarian, and have twisted it's meaning to something very different than what it once meant. Actual vegetarians had to come up with a new term, Vegan, to describe

Especially on a product that has "Designed... in California" on its back. Here are some alternative things Apple could do that would keep the app store clean and still go after the edu market:

1) Require app developers to keep screenshots G-rated.1a) If necessary, ask app developers to keep the app names "clean". This is harder to do and I'm not comfortable about this, but the general guidance is that "Playboy" and "Wobble" is okay, but "AssTits Deluxe" is not. There should be bright-line guidance for what is okay and what is not.2) Use content ratings to keep things at (roughtly) R or even M level. Users should have to manually change settings to see NC-17-rated content.3) Only allow folks with credit cards (nominally adults) to see NC-17 rated content.4) Extend enterprise policies (which the iPhone already supports) to allow admins to block levels of content.

These are from the top of my head. But all of these are better than going all Taliban [geekculture.com] on app developers.

They were hardly real apps. "Big Boobs," "Large Boobs," "Young Boobs," et cetera, et cetera. Recipe: Make an image display app, throw some pictures into it, make another version with different pictures, repeat indefinitely.

There are many applications that have some less-than-fully-dressed women (and men!) in them, what to think of apps like "Funny Pics" or "LOLcats"? Soon we'll only have Burqua clad women in the AppStore?

Sure, make a separate Adult/18+ category or something, I'm fine with that.

I'm not saying this because I don't want to protect children or offend any women. I just think that there is no way to consistently apply any criteria beyond "not showing genitals", without banning a lot more apps

Also, who is to say it's not the woman in the Pic that made the app? Maybe she's a tiny figured hungry woman who has chosen this method of selling her body to the public? Why Apple feels that they have the right to censor is ridiculous. But this is also one of the reasons I don't have an iPhone.

Not that I am a big fan of getting rid of a bunch of content because of seemingly arbitrary rules, but from the sounds of it many of this 'apps' are nothing more then a image (or a few images) of a girl/boy/goat in a bikini. It seems like a bit of a stretch to refer to those who create such content as developers.

Thats the crux of it. The applications were spammy, brought nothing to the table except for a few pictures at $0.99. You could churn out 100 such applications in a day, and some people got close to that rate.

If Apple adjusts their policy towards habitual application spammers (have you seen the Games section?), it would also solve the problem. But its easier to just target soft porn.

Exactly. There are app sweatshops like this guy [mobilecrunch.com] who has already been banned for gaming the system :

"In less than 9 months, Khalid Shaikh and his 26-employee team (most of which are in Pakistan) have published 943 applications [...] That’s roughly 5 apps a day, every day, for 250 days"

And they churn out crap like what Apple is now banning (emphasis mine) :

"They include “Top Sexy Ladies: Audrina Patridge,” which (from what we gather; again, we cannot test these apps because they are not up anymore) is an app that takes 5 pictures of The Hills star from online and puts them on your phone. Yes, it costs $4.99. There are hundreds of others like this, including Top Sexy Men apps and various news update apps"

. It's sure a good thing for those worried parents that they don't have any kind of web browser on there. On the internet, you're never more than one click away from something horrible."

Well, yeah. That's kind of the point. The things they can't control, they're making no attempt to control. However, they *can* control the contents of the store - and so they do, in order to appeal to their largest customer base. Time will tell if it's the right move; but you can't cry censorship when you agree to purchase a device whose sole gateway to applications is what is officially sanctioned by that device's creator. You sign away the right to control your user experience when you agree that they have control via the appstore. If you don't like it, don't buy the device until they change it; or buy it and jailbreak it (but be aware of the consequences as well).

Apple is fully within their rights to decide they want the appstore to sell ONLY applications designed for people age 8 and under. You know it when you buy the device (and if you don't, isn't that your responsibility too? being educated about your purchases?). App developers agree to it when they obtain the license that allow them to develop for the devices. You always have the choice to go with a different product. (Such as blackberry... no restrictions on what you can install, tens of thousands of compatible j2me apps. They have an appworld that's growing daily, but you're not required to use it to install software. I believe Android fits this bill too? )

A company that is exercising the rights that its customers and developers willingly cede to it is not censorship.

I think the real problem is not that you are forced to follow the rules to be on the apple store. Is that if, as a developer, you want to develop for the iPhone, you HAVE to use the apple store. Apple specifically, and (IANAL) dodgily makes you sign an agreement that says you cannot build your own appstore for iphone, even if it is for your own apps. Now if I had a lot of free time/money to throw at the problem, I'd try to challenge this on the basis of the local consumer laws, and(I'm in Quebec) with th

The only people up in arms are sleazy dudes out to make a quick buck off of someone else's boobies.

They've had their day and nothing of value has been lost.

So all the apps that were pulled for collateral damage are nothing important? (See above post for the Bikini seller that had the app pulled - and that wasn't the only one)

Also compare this with Apples statement when questioned over why SI and Playboy didn't have their apps pulled - "Because they were established brands". So Old porn is good, but new porn is not???

Or what about the "iWobble boobs" (or whatever it was called - and yep terrible juvenile name) which didn't supply content - you had to download and add your own content. That is like last year when the eBook reader was not approved because you could download the Karma Sutra

I can understand why some people want to remove some lower common denominator apps from the App store, but the heavy handed manner in which Apple did this does smack of censorship, and they had to be aware of what they were doing

Really don't care about porn. As you said it's abundant for those who want it. But a developer building an app, having it approved, then having the rugged pulled from under them. That I care about. I don't care if it's one vendor or even one sick sad 30 year old still living in his mum's basement.

I'd say taking down a best seller App based on its "Risque-ness" is censorship, any way you want to slice it.

Apple can stock and sell whatever products it wants to choose from. Yes. It is still censorship - but we've come to terms that private companies have the right to censorship. Apple is fine with censoring, its their product. And I agree - there's nothing wrong with that. But to say it isn't censorship is like saying the Chinese government isn't censoring web searches, they are just choosing to provide what they think is best, not censorship at all.

What about the consumers right to determine what they can do with their property? Their rights trump Apple's in every moral sense. Apple is interfering with the transactions of third parties; it is only a twisted copyright law and mathematical locks that allow them to stick their nose where it doesn't belong.

Censorship is when a third party prevents you from reading or viewing or watching content that you want to. In this case, Apple is the arbiter of their own app store for their own devices, and you know when you buy it that they get to choose what you do and do not have access to in the app store. It may be stupid and petty and lazy and a general sign of their incompetence, but that's not the same thing as censorship.

If Apple prevented you from viewing sexy items on the internet in general, then that would b

Alright, technically it is censorship. The literal definition of censorship is preventing access to information, but in this case, Apple is censoring information on Apple devices from the Apple Store, after you agreed in the EULA that you would allow them to do that. So, you should call it mutually agreed-to censorship, which is the same as walking in to an R rated movie that used to have NC-17 scenes that were cut out of it.

And the analogy still holds true - Apple isn't the only place in the universe that

What they don't stock is really none of your business, and if you don't like, take your products and have someone else carry it.

That's an argument against regulation, not against consumer outrage. I don't like it and because of that I'm expressing my intent to take my products elsewhere, informing everyone else about the problem so they too can make an informed decision.

I find it irksome that people have such an impoverished understanding of how censorship works.

Yes, the sort of censorship where a government bureaucrat with a slightly sinister mustache uses the threat of state violence to control your speech is the most extreme and severe form. And, if you simply must, you are free to assert that this is the only "true censorship". You can then go on to assert that anything else isn't "real" censorship, and anything that has some link to a contractual relationship, no matter how tenuous the link or adhesive the contract, is happy and voluntary and not at all censorship. Hurray, hurray!

However, and this part is important: Censorship is evil and dangerous in two distinct respects: The first is that it involves the illegitimate use(or threat of use) of violence for coercive ends. The second is that it distorts a society's flow of information in whatever direction is favored by the powerful and the incumbents. Since both democracies and free markets depend on informed actors, this is a major practical problem(and, of course, vibrant cultures arguably depend on the ability of individuals to express themselves without constraint).

It is true that the various forms of "censorship lite" practiced by the private sector(and some aspects of the public sector, through subtler than armed force means) possess relatively little of the first respect(though, unless you have ample resources, private sector use of lawsuits and contracts of adhesion to secure your silence can be unpleasantly close to coercive force). However, these forms of censorship possess the second respect to an enormous degree, likely greater than that of state censorship in all but the most repressive societies. The majority of controls over access to, and expression of, information faced by the people of any moderately free society are private sector. Many of them are, at least ostensibly, voluntary to some degree. Nevertheless, they have an effect.

Police-state censorship is evil; but dramatic and(in the more or less free world) relatively rare. The creeping death-by-a-thousand-cuts of the private sector, with its arbitration clauses, cryptographic controls, content filters, lawsuit threats, media ownership consolidation and so on and so forth is where the vast majority of information landscape distortion is happening. It is subtle, and most of it can be rationalized as "voluntary" with enough jesuitical hair-splitting about contracts; but that makes it no less dangerous.

The fact is, a consumer retailer like Apple can stock and sell whatever products to choose to its customers. What they don't stock is really none of your business, and if you don't like, take your products and have someone else carry it.

And exactly what store should they get to carry their iPhone/iPod app? Oh yeah, the Apple app store is the only store where iPhone/iPod users get their apps.

If iPhone/iPod users had an alternative store to buy apps then this would be a non-issue as you put it. However, s

The fact is, a consumer retailer like Apple can stock and sell whatever products to choose to its customers. What they don't stock is really none of your business, and if you don't like, take your products and have someone else carry it.

This is just another non-issue. The problem with Apple is that they are too successful, they need to keep out the riff raff.

Hm, I'm not so sure about that. Schiller has already intimated that Apple is now operating a cartel with certain app developers when responding to a question [nytimes.com] about why Sports Illustrated's and Playboy's apps are not banned:

“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format”.

I also suspect that Apple's App Store practices will lead to an antitrust investigation at some point. The iPhone is gaining dominance [tipb.com] in the smartphone market and if its capricious App Store behaviour continues, accusations of monopolistic behaviour are bound to crop up.

Apple removed them after getting complaints that they were degrading to women.

How exactly is this degrading to women?

Well, generally speaking, Apple is extremely degrading to women. A lot of people have been talking about how the iPad sounds like a feminine product, but few people seem to remember this quote from Steve Jobs' iPad keynote:

"And remember to keep the iPad away from your bitch when she's on the rag. You don't want her to bleed on it."

The Cupertino campus also briefly instituted "shirts-off Fridays" and, when I visited in 2000, at the end of their tour they handed out nude photos of their female workers.